Comfort Zone (16 page)

The Reaper hustled them into another, narrower passage they hadn't previously noticed, as its entrance was partly obscured by a suit of armour.

In a matter of seconds, they were outside, breathing fresher air and standing on an uneven cobblestone slope next to a small carpark.

‘You'll have to come back through the main …' The Grim Reaper was very solicitous.

‘No worries, mate, better get him home.' Jack marvelled at Matt's ability to take charge in moments of crisis. He was able to draw on some hidden aura of authority that ensured people would do what he wanted.

He was feeling the effects of the last half-hour's efforts, so it was easy to simulate symptoms for the benefit of the Grim Reaper. He bent over and generated a convincing coughing and retching fit. The Reaper turned and walked back through the doorway, and the heavy door slammed shut behind him with a loud bang.

‘Shit, that was close,' Jack said, as he took in their new surroundings.

‘Yeah, narrow escape from suffocation by glo-mesh and cheap perfume!'

‘What now?'

‘Who knows? Better check for signs of the baddies.'

‘What about the tram goons?'

‘Long gone, I'd say. Might see them again if we get a tram back.'

Jack walked around the corner of the building and poked his head out into Cardigan Street, looking so obvious that it defeated the purpose. There was no sign of the purple Commodore, Jeffrey, or the ticket inspectors.

‘Karl would've seen us get off the tram, so he knows we're around here somewhere. Better lie low for a while,' Matt said.

Jack was still breathing faster than usual, and his slight wheeze was faintly audible in the still night air. He leant against the wall and put his hands in his pockets. He rummaged around until he found his cigarettes and lighter, and took a deep draught of the fresh, rain-washed air that offered a welcome respite from the cloying atmosphere they had just escaped.

‘Want one?'

‘No, thanks. Not keen on dying just yet.'

‘Funny. Haven't killed me.' Jack hated anti-smoking zealots, and could be relied upon to bite hard whenever anyone chipped him about his smoking.

Matt ignored him. ‘So where'll we go?'

‘There's a pool room across the road I know. Your guy'd never find it unless he's a regular. Run by the bloke who used to run Matt's Blue Room in Nicholson Street.'

Matt had clearly never heard of Matt's Blue Room, but that didn't matter.

‘Sounds good.' He stood there for a few moments, looking at Jack, then asked: ‘Hey, how come you say your name van Doon?'

‘What in the fuck's that got to do with anything?'
We're on the run from drug enforcers, spies, ticket inspectors, and God only knows who else, and this guy's worried about how my name's pronounced
, Jack thought.

‘Nothing, really. Just wondered. Why isn't it van Doyne, or van Dine, or something?' Matt waved the business card Jack had given him, as if presenting evidence in court.

‘Dunno. In Dutch it's van Done … guess my old man wanted to sound more Aussie or something …'

‘Cop it at school much?'

‘A bit. Wogs got worse though. Greeks, Italians, you know …'

‘Yeah.'

‘Suppose you went to a posh private school?'

‘No, normal high school. Dad owned a car dealership, but by the time I came along it was going downhill.'

‘So how'd you get into all this banker stuff?'

‘Few lucky breaks, I guess. Did well at uni, got an uncle who used to work for one of them.'

‘Want to get married, have kids, all that stuff?'

‘God no!' Matt seemed genuinely horrified by the suggestion. ‘Maybe when I'm forty or something. Years away.'

‘Yeah, that's what I thought, too.' At last Jack was finding some common ground with his unlikely new friend.

‘Sounds like you had a tough childhood, mate. Still recovering.' Matt flashed a sardonic smile in his direction.

‘Could've been worse.'

A vague sense of the absurdity of the situation was floating around in Jack's mind. They were on the run, they'd just disentangled themselves from the crowd in a ridiculous entertainment venue, and they were standing in a carpark talking about his childhood. He was still breathing faster than usual, but he had recovered enough poise by now to shift back into gear.

‘Come on, let's go to the pool joint. Not exactly hiding out around here.'

Matt acknowledged that it was time to move on.

Jack pointed to a small side-street running from the opposite side of Cardigan Street, and they crossed over quickly and started walking up a slight hill. Orr Street was dominated by anonymous multi-storey commercial buildings. Jack ushered Matt down a small lane and up to an unmarked door, which he opened.

Inside they were confronted with an ancient set of wooden stairs that were so dimly lit it wasn't possible to see how far they went. A single naked globe on the first-floor landing was the sole source of light. Jack stopped when they reached the landing, and opened another unmarked door.

‘What kind of place is this?' Matt asked. ‘Pretty strange front door.'

‘This is the back way. Manager's a mate. Doesn't matter how often you go in or out, you pay to play. Probably a good escape route. Some of the customers aren't too respectable — know what I mean?'

‘Ah, yeah, okay.'

They eased their way into an enormous room with two long rows of full-sized billiard tables, each of them illuminated by a long bank of fluorescent tubes suspended only a metre or so above them. The remainder of the room was dark.

They could see that about half the tables were occupied. A small kiosk at one end of the cavernous room appeared to be where patrons paid to play. The walls contained cue-racks and other paraphernalia, and the air was heavy with a purple-grey smoky haze. Matt whispered to Jack that it felt like they'd walked onto the set of a Bogart movie.

‘Want to play?' Jack inquired casually. He assumed that if they just stood around and did nothing they'd look suspicious, maybe even get hassled.

Matt agreed. In the dim light, his fancy suit could have been mistaken for an op shop cast-off, but to make sure he didn't stand out too much, he took off his tie, and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

They walked around the outside of the tables towards the kiosk. Jack had a more confident air about him, now that he was back on home territory.

They passed a tall, wiry man who had just completed his shot. As he straightened and turned, he caught sight of Jack.

‘G'day,' he said in a sardonic, condescending tone.

‘Scabber — how's it going?'

‘Shitting on him. Naturally.' He pointed at the table, and looked across at his opponent standing at the far end of the table preparing to take his shot — a short, overweight man who was completely bald.

‘Good stuff.'

‘Who's your mate?' He cast a suspicious eye over Matt.

‘Customer, actually. You know … got to look after your customers.'

‘True.' Scabber punctuated this terse reply with a short, mirthless cackle, displaying a set of crooked yellow teeth. His face looked like he'd weathered innumerable battles.

‘Your shot,' his opponent called to him. Scabber made no effort to introduce him, and Jack didn't ask. He'd learned from experience not to show too much curiosity around Scabber.

‘Yeah, it is too. Good to see you, Jack.'

Having been summarily dismissed, Jack resumed his march to the kiosk. It was unattended when they got there.

‘So who's that guy?' Matt asked.

‘Scabber? Scabber McPhee. Old mate of mine, sort of. Done a fair bit of time for GBH, burgs, that sort of thing. Pretty much the last of the old school. Don't make them like Scabber any more. Good bloke, though. Handy to have on the team.' Jack tried to sound as if he mingled with criminal heavies all the time.

‘I'll bet he is.'

‘Not sure what he's doing these days. Doesn't pay to ask.'

‘No.'

A bored-looking man with a Midnight Oil T-shirt, a very large ear-ring, and an impressive double chin appeared inside the kiosk. Jack asked for a table for an hour, and Matt handed over the required cash. They took possession of a small box containing a wooden triangle and a set of pool balls. The attendant barely said a word throughout the entire transaction.

The ensuing hour was filled with aimless chat about their predicaments, and some half-hearted explanations of the game's rules and protocols from Jack. Much to his surprise, Matt had never played before. What on earth had he been doing with his life?

They were relaxed now. There was no sign of their pursuers, and it was clear that they had succeeded in giving them the slip.

‘So what's really going on with this dealer?' Jack asked Matt.

‘Who knows? Maybe he's got an image to uphold. I owe him money, so he's got to make an example of me …'

‘Rowan says he got him called off for a bit. Called in a favour …'

‘Doesn't look like it worked …'

‘No, maybe not. Rowan's a bit of a bullshit artist.'

‘Still don't know how I'm going to put together the cash.'

‘What about your boss?'

‘No way. He'd go mental if he knew I'd fucked up like this. Puts him at risk.'

‘Parents? Girlfriend?'

‘Mum and dad don't have much, and mum's sick. Probably kill her if she found out. And I'm between girlfriends.'

‘Ah-ha. Me too. Common problem.' Jack wished he actually was between girlfriends. It was stretching it to classify a decade as ‘between'.

‘So what's all this
ASIO
stuff about?'

Reasoning that he was now involved with Matt, Jack told him about Farhia's book. He didn't want to tell him about the photos on his phone, but he couldn't think of any other way to explain
ASIO
's interest in him.

‘Tricky situation,' Matt said at the end of his explanation. ‘Maybe you should find someone to read it for you, find out what's in it. Could be harmless.'

‘Yeah, not easy, though. They all know each other … and half of them are related. Hard finding someone who wouldn't tell Farhia.'

Matt potted a ball with a level of skill that belied his lack of previous experience.

‘Hey! Thought you said you'd never played before.'

‘I haven't. Got lucky.'

‘So did you grow up in a convent or something?'

‘No, I just didn't like the whole pub thing. Dad spent his whole life in the pub — reckoned that's where he made his sales. Drove mum nuts. He was a prick, dodgy as a three-dollar note.'

‘So you got respectable?' Jack couldn't quite disguise the sneer in his voice. In his eyes, there were few occupations lower than car salesman, but banker was one of them.

Matt interrupted his shot, stood up straight, and rested the end of his cue on the floor.

‘Just didn't want to be a pissant pretending to be a bigshot. I spent my whole life surrounded by people who were full of bullshit and not worth ten bucks — always working another scam, ripping off their mates. They thought going to uni was for wankers, when deep down they were just jealous because kids they went to school with got to go, and they didn't. They lived in Vermont and pretended it was Brighton — you know the story.'

Jack didn't really know, but years of driving had given him a very keen understanding of Melbourne's complicated social strata. Matt's words rang true. He sounded more sincere than usual, a bit more grown-up, even a fraction bitter.
More to this guy than I thought,
he mused.

Their hour of pool was almost over. They decided it would now be safe to venture outside and take a tram back up Swanston Street. Matt doubted Karl had the patience to wait that long: ‘Probably back in Doncaster by now.'

The return trip was uneventful. They even had a laugh at some of their more ridiculous exploits earlier in the evening.

‘Lucky you couldn't see me sprinting up Victoria Street, mate. Not a pretty sight!'

‘Probably going to have to get the suit dry-cleaned. Next time I'm out with you I'm wearing overalls!'

‘How much's that clobber worth anyway?'

‘You don't want to know.'

The top end of Lygon Street was deserted when they got off the tram. There was no sign of Karl, nor of Robert Jeffrey. It was hardly likely that either of them would be lurking there, as almost two hours had passed since they'd scrambled onto the tram in Lygon Street, but Jack needed to make sure.

Matt opened the door of his silver BMW, waved goodbye to Jack, and sank wearily into the soft leather seat. Jack kept walking, and as he approached the flats, slowed down and looked around for any signs of Jeffrey. Everything appeared normal, and as he mounted the rear stairs he sighed — a deep, heavy sigh of pure relief. He was physically and mentally spent.